Kevin K. Lehmann (born September 7, 1955, in

Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe th ...

and

spectroscopist Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets the electromagnetic spectra that result from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the radiation. Matter wav ...

at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...

, best known for his work in the area of intramolecular and collisional dynamics, and for his advances in the method of

cavity ring down spectroscopy Cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) is a highly sensitive optical spectroscopic technique that enables measurement of absolute optical extinction by samples that scatter and absorb light. It has been widely used to study gaseous samples which a ...

(CRDS). Raised in Irvington, New Jersey, a suburb of Newark, Lehmann studied chemical physics and mathematics at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

Cook College The School of Environmental and Biological Sciences (SEBS) is a constituent school of Rutgers University's New Brunswick-Piscataway campus. Formerly known as Cook College—which was named for George Hammell Cook, a professor at Rutgers in t ...

, graduating with highest honors in 1977. His undergraduate research included work in reaction dynamics with John Krenos and John Tully of

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

, photoelectron spectroscopy with Joseph Berkowitz of

Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory operated by University of Chicago, UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facil ...

, and raman and resonate multiphoton ionization (

REMPI Rempi is a Madang language of Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Inde ...

) spectroscopies under Professor Lionel Goodman. Lehmann went on to receive his doctorate in chemical physics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in 1983, and was elected to the

Harvard Society of Fellows The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intell ...

, where he was a junior fellow until 1986. Under the direction of

William Klemperer William A. Klemperer (October 6, 1927 – November 5, 2017) was an American chemist who was one of the most influential chemical physicists and molecular spectroscopists in the second half of the 20th century. Klemperer is most widely known fo ...

, Lehmann's graduate work involved studies of highly excited vibrational states using photoacoustic spectroscopy. During his time as a fellow, he served as a visiting scientist at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

's George Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory. There he developed with Stephen Coy the technique of microwave-detected, microwave-optical double resonance, which permits the automatic assignment of complex spectra. Appointed to the chemistry faculty of

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

in 1985, Lehmann received both the Henry and Camille Dreyfus Award for new faculty and the

Presidential Young Investigator Award The Presidential Young Investigator Award (PYI) was awarded by the National Science Foundation of the United States Federal Government. The program operated from 1984 to 1991, and was replaced by the NSF Young Investigator (NYI) Awards and Presiden ...

from the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

in his first year with the university. In 1987, the university acknowledged him with the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. He was promoted to associate professor in 1991, and to full professor in 1995, the same year he was named a fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

. He received the Thomas A. Edison Patent Award in 2002 for his work in CRDS, and in 2003, was granted the Earle K. Plyler Prize in Molecular Spectroscopy. Lehmann left Princeton in 2005 to join the faculty of the University of Virginia, where he has continued his work in development of ultrasensitive spectroscopic methods with applications in trace gas detection, as well as studies of molecular dynamics in the gas phase and superfluid helium.

Articles by Kevin K. Lehmann

"Potential of a neutral impurity in a large 4He cluster"

"The infrared multiphoton excitation and photochemistry of DN3"

References

External links

/ University of Virginia faculty page
21st-century American chemists 1955 births Living people Harvard University alumni Harvard Fellows Rutgers University alumni Princeton University faculty University of Virginia faculty Spectroscopists People from Irvington, New Jersey Fellows of the American Physical Society {{US-chemist-stub